Suggestions/help with Boudica noble

Renesisfury

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 29, 2009
Messages
63
Hey all, this is my first time playing with the Celts, and I seem to be lagging way behind in research, and I was wondering if anyone could give me some tips. I normally plan Bismarck, so this is a bit of a new thing for me. Noble/huge/marathon/Boudica of Celtia
 

Attachments

  • nappy.CivBeyondSwordSave
    543.8 KB · Views: 66
  • Civ4ScreenShot0010.JPG
    Civ4ScreenShot0010.JPG
    93.5 KB · Views: 118
  • Civ4ScreenShot0012.JPG
    Civ4ScreenShot0012.JPG
    117.8 KB · Views: 85
Well, aren't you a little warmonger :) Boudi certainly had the traits for it.

It's hard to tell at this date exactly how efficient your war effort has been. I see you took out the Mongols which is good and Nappy is a bad mofo. However, there are some clear problems that stand out:

1) Way to few workers for the size of this empire. Too few workers means you are working unimproved tiles which is a major mistake. You have 11 workers and 20 cities. You should have around 30 workers. Granted you've just conquered several cities. But you should continue to build workers to keep up. 2 pop whip those suckers and use the hammer overflow into key buildings or unis.

2) Learn to specialize your cities. Boudi does not have great economic traits (although Charasmatic is no bad) so she needs a few cottage/commerce cities or an SE economy if there is lots of food.

3) Granaries should be one of your first buildings and go in every city - it is the most important building. You may be overbuilding in some of your cities.

4) Well, your tech is not behind Nappy, but it will be interesting to see how you compare to the other AIs when you meet them. In terms of Noble, you are way behind at this date. You should have Edu, Oxford and Lib by now. Part of this is the constant grind of war and the general management of your empire

5) Honestly, I might have held off on attacking Nappy. For one he is Tao, although that doesn't mean much to him. He is IMO the worst warmonger in the game and builds lots of units and has the traits to support it. You have a nice stack but I don't like the mix now that Nappy has LBs. Phants/cats en masse with support units would work best at this stage. However....

6) If you held off, you can focus on building up your economy and getting key techs to give you a decisive edge in battle. I guarantee that your stack will grind badly against Nappy right now. Get Maces/cats for more effectiveness or just focus on getting to Curs/Rifles and/or Cannons. Also, you should have scouted his land before attacking

7) How do you recover, Well, as mentioned you need more workers to improve your land. Build wealth to get your slider up and build research to in order to power through the techs. You should have a high food GP farm to run lots of specialists to get out great people for an academy/settling/and bulbing.

8) You have no National Wonders like National Epic for more great people or Heroic Epic in your main unit pump to pump units faster. You should have Ox by now in you best science city to boost research. Techs like Civil Service, Paper and Edu are important to have by now for their boosts. CS gives chain farming too for more food.

edit: By the way, early game don't forget the guerilla promo line for GWs. Guerilla 3 is pretty awesome since it gives 50% withdrawal chance on GWs making them almost early siege units. With Buodi's traits, a barrack, and a settled GG or two, GWs can get to GIII very quick and then city raider. I like mixing about half GIII with half City Raiders. Hit with GIIIs first and then mop up with City Raider.
 
Wow, awesome advice! I just had a thought that maybe I would be better off fighting a defensive war? Just stack LB's in the border cities and make him siege me, then just send off a naval force once I get astro?
 
I don't know about all that. Since you got this war started, take out a few of Nappy's cities and sue for peace. He should give you something - maybe gold. Then recover your economy. You have enough cities that you can begin the recovery process now.

I also meant to mention that when on the offensive you should bring LOTS of cats. Siege is king in this game - use it. You should have at least half your stack cats. Drop defenses and then weaken stacks before mopping up. Cats will die but other units will live and get stronger. You can also focus EPs on your target and use spy siege (they can run a mission to drop city defenses to 0 for 1 turn - the city revolt mission). Then hit the city with cats. Spies are very effective with later mass mounted attacks like Curs.

If you are newer to the game, I also recommend standard size maps.
 
It's not that I am super new to the game, but I had my strategies for Bismarck that seemed o work well, I am just trying to expand my horizons. In order to get back in the tech race, I normally build wealth, would that still be a good way to bump up my tech rate?
 
I would think with that landmass and the cities so close together that 20 workers should be plenty. Most of the cities only have a handful of tiles to develop.
 
I have been trying to use my workers wisely, I chopped everything that I could, and I think my city placement is decent. Is it just that I overexpanded and crashed my economy?
 
I have been trying to use my workers wisely, I chopped everything that I could, and I think my city placement is decent. Is it just that I overexpanded and crashed my economy?
The real problem with your workers is that your cities are working heaps of unimproved tiles. This is the damaging effect of having far too few workers.

Serfdom is not a substitute for having enough workers, it is the worst civic in the game! Besides, +50% build rate isn't close to enough to make up for your worker defecit anyway. The real civic for getting improvments built up faster is slavery, it lets you turn those useless unimproved tile citizens into workers and other useful things.

Bit of a sidenote on your economy, on trade.
All of your routes are domestic, and while this isn't a suprise as your killing everyone in sight the fact they are all worth 1:commerce: is a major drain. By simply settling 2 cities on another island you can more than double your trade :commerce: and improve your economy before the new cities even start working tiles.
 
Bit of a sidenote on your economy, on trade.
All of your routes are domestic, and while this isn't a suprise as your killing everyone in sight the fact they are all worth 1 is a major drain. By simply settling 2 cities on another island you can more than double your trade and improve your economy before the new cities even start working tiles.
that might be what I was missing. Normally I have cities on multiple islands. The quality of the land was good enough that I didn't need to go to islands.
:)
 
@lymond

Wow, I had no idea that guerilla 3 was so strong. I really missed out on a promotion opportunity there. Good to know for next game.
 
1) Settle a city on that small island to your west. Better, settle two cities on islands (there's also an island to the east you could settle on if you want). They'll give you intercontinental trade routes with all your other cities. Add that to their own trade routes, and just by building those two cities you gain over 50 commerce per turn in your empire (of course, you have to spend a little of that on new city maintenance, but not much).

2) You haven't explored all of Nappy's land, you haven't explored the rest of your continent, and you certainly haven't put much time into naval exploration. By this point in the game, everywhere you can reach without optics you should already have explored. For reference, I went ahead and checked in the WB to see what sort of impact this would have made... suffice to say it would have made a big difference.
Spoiler :
You'd have grabbed numerous more huts, probably been able to get world circumnavigation for +1 naval movement, and potentially have met as many as 6 other civilizations.

It also would certainly have helped you with settling your continent, which if anything has gone too slowly - with all those gold and gems resources, you probably ought to have been able to fill in your whole continent by now, but there are several nice city spots you haven't grabbed yet. And it would be helpful for you in planning your war against Nappy right now - you don't know how many cities he has, what size they are, what sort of production they have, what resources they give access to, whether he has other hostile neighbors...

3) As others have mentioned, you need more siege. Much more siege. Your big stack has 31 melee units, 1 scout (??), and 2 catapults. A more reasonable mix would be something like 16 melee, 16 catapults. Also, you've got a lot of espionage piled up against Nappy. If you're planning on eliminating him, that does you no good long-term, so you might as well use it for spies right now. You could manage 3-4 city revolts, which would wipe out his city defense in 3-4 cities before you attacked them... just make sure to have spies sitting stationary in those cities for 5 turns before you use them for a revolt. It might be a little late for that in this game, but it's certainly something to keep in mind in the future.

4) More workers. Again as others have mentioned, you don't have enough. Most of your cities are working mostly improved tiles, but...
-Dijon is working unimproved corn.
-Karakorum is working inland lake without lighthouse (2f, 2 commerce) when it could be working a grass tile you could have built a cottage on; by now that would be worth much more than 2 commerce. It's also working an unimproved grass/hill tile.
-Ning-Hsia needs a fishing boat on that fish. It's also working unimproved plains.
-Old Serai is working 2 unimproved grass tiles.
-Tolosa is working unimproved grass, unimproved plains, and a coastal tiles without a lighthouse.
-Camulodunum is working 3 unimproved grass tiles.
-Isca is working 4 unimproved grass tiles.
-Bibracte is working 4 coastal tiles despite not working 3 grass tiles. Build cottages on those grass tiles and they'll quickly become more valuable than coastal tiles. In particular, one of those tiles already has a cottage, but isn't being worked because the city manager AI is failing miserably.
-Verlamion is working 2 inland lakes w/o lighthouse and an unimproved grass tile. By this point, it should be working 3 grass/village or grass/town tiles instead!
-Durocorturum is working an unimproved grass tile.
-Nemetocenna is working unimproved grass/silk.
-Bagacum is working two coastal tiles, when there's two perfectly good grass tiles there you could have cottaged.

5) More thought in improvements. Your cities are small, and their food surpluses are also small. Part of this is because you don't have Civil Service. However, another part is because you don't really seem to build farms - your entire empire has a grand total of 3 farms not on wheat/corn/rice. As a rough "rule of thumb", don't build cottages until a city has a food surplus equal to it's current happiness surplus - that is, if you have a city currently with 8 happiness and 4 unhappiness, build farms instead of cottages until you've got 4 surplus food there. This isn't a scribe-in-stone law, but it's a good guideline to work by. Once the city starts to approach it's happiness cap, you can replace some of those farms with cottages if you want.

6) Tech. tree thought. You should absolutely have gotten Civil Service by now. It's not uncommon for players to get that tech by 1500 BC actually. You got compass, but don't seem to be making any use of it - you probably could have put that off until later. In general, whenever you're going to research a tech first ask yourself if it will cost you anything to wait and research it later instead. If the answer is no, then wait and research it later.

7) Improvements. I notice that just about all your cities have Duns. Yes, it's nice to have the free Guerrilla 1 promotion... but not nice enough to build one in every city. You really only need a few guerrilla units overall - 3-5 would be plenty, to defend the stack on hills or take on top-defenders in cities. Which means you really only need a dun in 1 city. That's quite a few hammers you could have saved right there. In general, your cities are badly lacking in basic economic infrastructure. Further, I note almost no markets at all, but almost a dozen libraries. When your science slider is down in the 0-40% range and you aren't focused on running specialists, generally markets will give you more "bang for your buck" - that is, with 100 commerce but at 20% research, a library will give you 5 more beakers, but a marketplace will give you 20 more wealth. Note the caveat I put there, though; if you're focusing on running specialists to generate science, the same does not necessarily apply. However, just looking through your cities and looking at all the cottages you built I can tell that isn't the case this game. Also, I notice you have only 3 courthouses. Ideally you'd have at least 8 by now, so you could build a forbidden palace somewhere up north following your war with Napoleon to keep your empire's costs down.

8) Civics. You're running Serfdom right now, which is almost indisputably the worst civic in the game. Build a few more workers instead, and run slavery or caste system. Generally you run slavery to help get new cities up faster, to help get ready for war quicker, or to use up surplus food and turn it into production; caste system is a very popular one for peaceful periods where you can run a lot of specialists. Similarly, I note you're in Paganism. As soon as you're done building military units (which I would stop right now, except for maybe building one last round of catapults), switch to organized religion before going back to building infrastructure. It's an extremely powerful civic and you should make full use of it whenever you can.

The big takeaways: Settle intercontinental cities. Much more exploration, more farms, more workers, more siege, more infrastructure. More thought on civics and technologies. Fewer melee units, fewer cottages. One last point - I did check this in the WB, and your tech situation isn't hopeless. Play smart and you can still win.
 
@coanda
You mention several city sites that I hadn't settled yet. Where? I thought I had nailed down all the good ones.
 
@coanda
You mention several city sites that I hadn't settled yet. Where? I thought I had nailed down all the good ones.

You've got one marked on your map already, but just haven't settled it yet. You can see a few nearby islands which might have good city sites on them if you explored them more fully. Also, you really ought to check out that road in the SE corner of your empire.
 
More siege. About half of your army should be siege, with more than half of military builds being siege. Lower city defences with them, suicide them for collateral damage (CR promotion is best here*), and mop up with melee units. You should lose a few cats and no melee units- far fewer hammers lost than just throwing melee units against bad odds all day. Expect to lose lots of cats and few if any melee units, and build reinforcements throughout the war accordingly.

* Someone did the math. IIRC CR is best because higher survival odds beats slightly more collateral, since you'll use the same number of catapults to attack anyway. The defending unit takes more damage as well.

Archery units are pretty terrible, simply because holing up in your cities is a BAD idea. If all those archers and bows were catapults instead, you could collateral any size stack to within an inch of their life and mop up with whatever melee units were around. Staying in your cities with archer units:
1) Wastes time. The sooner the enemy stack dies, the sooner you can invade.
2) Lets them pillage your city, or bypass it and take a less-defended city.
3) Archer units are poor at taking cities.

Like everyone else said, MORE WORKERS. If all your unimproved tiles were improved, you could have 45 more commerce PER TURN or more at this point, not to mention additional hammers and food (more pop working more tiles, for example if the corn was farmed). A good rule of thumb is: if you're working unimproved tiles, you need to build more workers 15 turns ago. :)

Serfdom is terrible. Even if I was being forced to run it, I would still want near 1.5x workers, say 26 instead of 30. Slavery is far better, converting extra food (each city should have at least one food resource) into hammers in new and hammer-poor cities to get infrastructure built, like granaries. You can also whip 2 pop to get rid of angry citizens if you grow over the happy cap. Whipping citizens that are working unimproved tiles is usually better then letting them waste food for little benefit.

I recommend you switch into slavery, and whip catapults and workers in cities that are working unimproved tiles.
 
Top Bottom